When it’s a frosty, gray, blustery day and you’re so cold that you’re shaking, it’s pretty hard to imagine that the experience could potentially be good for you. But health experts are learning more all the time about the possible benefits of cold exposure, especially when it’s accompanied by shivering. Cold exposure treatment even has a name — “cryotherapy.” Although the procedure is available to consumers in some places, the field is so new that rigorous medical studies are few. But a new controlled study presented at the recent meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) has helped fill some of that gap. It indicates that exposure to cold might be beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes. The data was presented by Adam Sellers, a PhD student at the University of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He reported that shivering during repeated exposure to cold improves glucose tolerance, reduces blood pressure, and lowers blood sugar and blood fat levels.
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The researchers recruited 17 participants — 11 men and four postmenopausal women — between the ages of 40 and 75 who had blood sugar and A1C levels (a measure of long-term glucose control) in the upper range. The subjects were exposed to the cold for one hour every day for 10 days. The exposure was more sophisticated than, say, having them stand outside on a cold day— as Sellers explained, “We induced the cold with a water-perfused suit worn by the participant, through which water flows at 10°C, and this cools the participant. Eventually, the participant starts to shiver, and does so for at least one hour every morning for 10 days.” The hypothesis was that shivering might cause the muscles to contract mechanically, thereby generating heat and burning calories.
Benefits tied to regulated cold exposure
The researchers administered an oral glucose tolerance test twice for each subject — once before the beginning of the 10-day trial and again at the end. They reported that average fasting plasma glucose (blood sugar) declined significantly in 13 out of the 15 participants while glucose tolerance improved by 6%. Fasting plasma triglyceride and free-fatty acid concentrations also dropped — by a lot (32%). As Sellers expressed it, “This is important because free-fatty acids are involved in the role of insulin resistance. In addition, the large reduction in serum triglycerides could have implications for atherosclerosis, which may also be beneficial.” Finally, all 15 subjects experience a decrease in blood pressure, which Sellers said was related to a decrease in resting heart rate.
Although it is way too early for anyone to recommend that people with diabetes immerse themselves in bathtubs full of ice cubes, the findings raise some tantalizing possibilities. One of the attendees at the EASD presentation, Denis P. Blondin of the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, said: “The reality is that we know it can be difficult and even painful for individuals with obesity to perform exercise, and therefore, cold exposure offers a passive way of improving our metabolic profile and cardiovascular health. Some will argue that it is unrealistic to propose cold exposure as a therapy, but people overlook the fact that cold exposure … has increased in popularity over the past five years and has also been a cultural staple for many Nordic countries … While it can certainly be uncomfortable at first … we adapt very quickly.”
Sellers himself considers the data preliminary but thought-provoking. As he put it, “This is an important first step investigating the effect of shivering on health. Our findings are promising and may have important health implications, given that shivering improved many cardiometabolic health outcomes which are associated with diseases like Type 2 diabetes. In future studies, we plan to assess the effect of shivering in adults with Type 2 diabetes.” As he also noted, “For those people who cannot perform exercise for whatever reason this might be a good alternative.”
Want to learn more about type 2 diabetes? Read “Diabetes Testing: Type 2 Diabetes,” “Welcome to Diabetes,” and “Type 2 Diabetes Remission — Can It Be Done?”
